Korean Symbols

**ToUnderstand** · Posted On: 9/01/2007 3:54pm

Originally Posted by DSL

Honor = 명예 (yong yoeh)

Since when did Mee um give a yo sound its Myung Yae not Yong Yoeh... if im wrong shoot me 2 years of saturdays stolen from me by Hangul Haggyo never payed off.

**Ronin.74** · Posted On: 9/01/2007 5:21pm

Originally Posted by ToUnderstand

Since when did Mee um give a yo sound its Myung Yae not Yong Yoeh... if im wrong shoot me 2 years of saturdays stolen from me by Hangul Haggyo never payed off.

Don't worry no one's going to shoot you, you are correct it's Myung Yae

**DSL** · Posted On: 9/01/2007 5:27pm

Rofl, teaches me to read it in 7 point type!
Completely correct, I had read it as the silent i-ung (sp?) (the one that looks like an 'o').

**kwoww** · Posted On: 9/01/2007 6:47pm

mieum and ieung look really similar in small sans-serif fonts.

**Craigypooh** · Posted On: 9/01/2007 6:59pm

As I understand it the Koreans didn't have their own written language until the 15th century and used chinese characters until then. There's a nice history here: http://www.declan-software.com/korean.htm

**kwoww** · Posted On: 9/01/2007 7:05pm

Speaking of Declan Software... (lol that's where the Korean dictionary I used came from. i'm also teaching myself Korean with that Korean HakGyo program they've got. Good stuff.)

But yeah, Korean is a bit like modern Hebrew in that it was entirely fabricated, except modern Korean is about 300 years older than Hebrew IIRC.

**Craigypooh** · Posted On: 9/01/2007 7:07pm

What did we all do, other than bash rocks together, before the internet was invented?

**ToUnderstand** · Posted On: 9/01/2007 7:34pm

yeah korea used Hanja before King Sejong and scholars created hangul. they did use chinese characters but not in the sense that it was exactly the way the chinese used them they used chinese charecter for korean words. and i believe for a lot of words they used different charachers than the chinese did.

**kwoww** · Posted On: 9/01/2007 8:58pm

Apparently it's still used in scientific papers and such where clarity is absolutely vital, because of the number of homophones in the Korean language, and Korean children still learn around 1,000 characters in school. In North Korea, hanja have been outright banned, which is surprising to me because I always thought that North Korea hugged China's nuts because they're both Communist. Shows you how much I know.

**DSL** · Posted On: 9/01/2007 11:16pm

That's odd, I thought the same, but I guess NK's leader kind of IS a nut.
From what I've seen of S Korea though, Hanja is used anytime they want something to seem important. I know all of like 8 simplified characters heh, so yeah, might be a while before I can understand wth they're writing about. Hangul on the other hand is great.